Today is the beginning a new era in the portuguese news industry. i is out on the stands and the web, and it already has defined a unique personality, becoming a true game changer right from the start. This is a first glance review to their website and their online features.

What is immediately striking when you open i‘s website is its cleanliness: three content columns under a header, dominating the top of the page with a slideshow for the major news stories ; there is no clutter, no text beyond tiles (finally somebody got it), video right in the middle of the page, that doesn’t get to fill the whole width of the screen. The left yellow sidebar shows the main website features, middle column is for content and on the right the usual “most read/commmented” boards, special assignments, and live sport results. At the bottom, three content columns: Country, World, Sports. Can’t get any simpler than that. The newsroom and the newspaper are divided into four sections: Zoom, Radar, More and Sports. The website reflects this oranization.

Each article seems to have at least one picture whenever possible and it has the usual vote, send and print features. It also has a social bookmarking tool that allows you to send the story to Google Bookmarks, Technorati, and (the schock!) Facebook, MySpace, Flickr(!?) and almighty Twitter. Social networking seems to be quite a deal for the project since they designated a few reporters to handle Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. In a Twitter conversation i had with the man in charge for social networking he put the concept in one word: they want to build an “icommunity”.

Users are invited to participate in the life of the newsroom, sharing their news in a feature called iReporter. You send content using your user profile, and share it under “news story” or film, restaurant, music (etc) reviews, up to 1500 char. You can also post pictures and video right away. All articles must comply to i’s editorial rules.

The website also has a few blogs, i really didn’t explore them, but they all seem to be invited by the editors.

Another thing that i’m curious about is how they will interact with the rest of the companies of the group. They own a few regional newspapers and radios, and i wonder how national and local will work together (if ever). The website has a page for them, but for now, it’s just the logos.

Video seems to be an important bet for i. They look technically great, though the TV like narrative is still present (not a surprise, the presentation video was made by a TV journalist), but it looks good. Shareable, embeddable (except for wordpress.com, a platform problem), easy to load, what else could you ask? I’ll be waiting for more video work.

Overall, the i website is one step into the future, in design -it looks gourgeous-, philosophy, organization. It is not made for shovelware, and it would be a real shame if they fell into that. There are other details i have to explore in time, like linking, comment moderation, social networks interaction, etc. But they’re off to a good start online.

Ok. Rosen did it before and i didn’t knew. As i was watching this video i felt really uncomfortable, all the items i wanted to adress are there. But Jay does it better. I’ll take this as a sign i’m going in the right direction, or, at least, that i am aware of what is going on.

Last week a new news channel made its’ premiere on cable. TVI24 is the 24 hour news endeavor of TVI, one of the four free-to-air portuguese TV channels. It’s the third of its kind after SIC Notícias and the public channel RTP-N. But the reason for this post it’s their website.

Based on the format of Portugal Diário (which went through a makeover last year), TVI24 website takes the best of it and adds a bit more of color and a video stream on the top right corner. Besides that it’s just the same. The word is that both websites will merge, since they belong to the same media group.

Who also revamped their news website was RTP. The public television rearranged their contents, and design, creating a good looking page. Now lets see what will the remaining news channel will do to stay up to speed with the competition.

I was organizing some folders in my desktop when i realized i had a bundle of unread pdfs, that covered issues from Krav Maga to Slide Guitar lessons. And Journalism, of course. Some of these manuals and resources were already referred here at The Lake. They are great for students and seasoned professionals, from writers to multimedia enthusiasts, and are a valuable asset for those who are converting to new media.

This is not a final list, so if you have any other links i’d appreciate if you’d share them with the rest of us.

NewsU (www.newsu.org) offers newsroom training to journalists and journalism students through its interactive e-learning program and links to other journalism education and training opportunities. The program is a partnership between the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

The ItrainOnline MMTK is a growing collection of “workshop kits” for face-to-face training. The materials use a standard set of templates, and offer building blocks for trainers to build their own courses. But don’t think you need to be a trainer to use the ItrainOnline MMTK! The handouts are valuable information resources for anyone who wants to teach themselves about any of the wide range of topics covered.

This is a small doc created by researchers of Information and Communication in Digital Platforms from Porto and Aveiro universities. Citizen journalism, cyberjournalism through the eyes of journalists, citizens and academics, in an interesting nine minute video. In Portuguese.

The article comes in two parts, the first concentrating on paying attention to your existing and potential audience, and the challenges that both media companies and independent content creators face. The second part discusses video production quality long-form vs short-form video.

They also interviewed “content decision makers” and “content creators” for input.

First of all, they admit that making online video successful is an art, not a science.

As journalism evolves, so do the tools journalists come to depend on. While the Internet can’t provide all the resources a good reporter needs, it does offer a number of them that can make a journalist’s job easier and more productive.

The following web services have become an integral part of the evolving toolkit for the modern journalist: (…)

What makes a blog a “blog” are the social and cultural practices that have developed alongside this new web-based delivery system. In other words, the technology and history of blogs has resulted in certain generic conventions, much like the evolution of print led to a set of conventions.

We are proud to announce Ubiquity 0.1.5. Since the last major update, Ubiquity has gained a sleeker look and a smarter, more stable core. Ubiquity has also gained the ability to be skinned: anyone who knows how to write standards-complaint CSS can now create and share a custom Ubiquity skin.

Beautiful: Ubiquity has a new look that increases its visual simplicity and lays the groundwork for full keyboard access.

There has been a good evolution in multimedia content, which, for the record, is not a standalone video or slideshow, but a mashup of different media elements. And even if we talk about video, we can find an increase in interactivity. So it’s not like the sit back and hold on attitude of television, but a look and explore thing. The web is not television ok?

“I was floored when I realized how much data, media and extra functionality was built to enhance an otherwise basic video player. Wise takes storytelling to a completely new level with the introduction of interactive videos.” Traci Boyer

Wise has four distinct areas: main video, side menu, map, and an info box that has also video and interactive content. He says he created 20 minutes of video from 20 hour footage, embeds archive videos and adds more 60 minutes of extra footage he felt it made part of the bigger picture. This makes it a bit hard to follow because there are many things happening at the same time, but we can always go back, and explore.

Zach Wise also says “Thirst in the Mojave tries to bring a little more web mentality to video but still utilize the linear narrative strengths that make video such a great storytelling tool.” So he’s trying to tie the best of two worlds together.

Another great feature for me is the fact that Zach took the effort to do a few things i’ve been defending for some time now:

-explain how you did it: many interactive features might go unnoticed simply because the user didn’t understand how things worked. Besides the technical value it works as a guide book;

-use the raw data/footage/audio etc: the final work must be edited of course, but make available the raw original material you used. Zach puts it really well:

“Transparency is a great tool of truth.

Another use of the more info box in this project was transparency. An example of this is a scene in part 3 where Pat Mulroy is talking about the pipeline project on Face to Face with Jon Ralston. In the narrative you see several clips from the program but in the more info box you can watch the entire Face to Face show that those clips came from. Any viewers who might be skeptical that those clips were taken out of context can watch the program and see that the clips were selected appropriately.”

So if there was any sort of biased perspective he’d be caught in the act. I did this with my crowdsourced interview with Dave Cohn, edited two videos but made the original interview available so that people could have the full answers and have them in the original order. This sort of “Naked Journalism” is interesting because it helps the audience to understand how and why it was made, and reinforces the feeling of trust and critical spirit towards the work of journalists.

Oh, and this took some time doing. A huge amount of it.Don’t miss this one.Kudos to you Zach.